Monday, August 14

Can anyone even still see the thin end?

It seems that elements within the BBC have decided that the organisation's particular brand of leftwingery hasn't descended nearly far enough into the realms of lunacy, and they aim to redress this deficiency:

The BBC was yesterday plunged into a row over its foreign reporting after its new "diversity czar" said there were too many white journalists reporting from non-white nations, particularly in Africa.

Mary Fitzpatrick said that she was tired of repeatedly seeing programmes where the situation was "here we are in Africa, and here's a white person saying, well, look at these people".

She said it was vital that BBC news reflected the audience that it was serving, with "valid and culturally accurate voices speaking."

So we're reporting from India: the reporter should be of which caste? A Sikh? Moslem? Hindu? Reporting from Sri Lanka, Sinhalese or Tamil? Nigeria: Yoruba, Hausa or Ibo?

As the UK is majority a vague pinkish colour is she going to fire all reporters currently employed in the UK who are not vaguely pinkish?

I haven't found any complaints from Ms Fitzpatrick about Catholic reporters telling us about Protestant areas of Belfast.

But I'd like to highlight something else. Look again at what this nasty idiot of a woman said: "culturally accurate voices". There's a phrase with legs: "cultural accuracy". Jesus wept.

Look, you ignorant bint, "accuracy" has a meaning. There is only only measure of how accurate something is, and that is how closely it matches reality. And no, reality isn't a cultural construct; it is that which exists. If a report is accurate in London, it is equally as accurate in Ulan Bator, in Denver, and in Nairobi. If a report is accurate when it comes out of the mouth of a black Bantu man, it is equally as accurate when spoken by a white Frenchman, a Chinese woman, or a six-year-old disabled Innuit. The news does not become any more or less true depending on whether Trevor McDonald or Andrea Catherwood reads it.

Expect to hear a lot more about "cultural accuracy" in the coming years. It'll probably be mentioned a lot in discussions of science, and combined with the word "hegemony". How bloody depressing.